Augie March

Augie March: Meet the Band

Glenn Richards was the male participant in the youngest legal wedding in the state of Victoria Australia, but his fledgling marriage ended one week later when his sweetheart?s carnival worker parents left town, taking their daughter with them.

Edmond Ammendola spends his spare time and money buying and renovating Victorian terrace houses in Melbourne, then renting them out solely to tenants of an artistic bent for affordable rent.

Adam Donovan and Dave Williams grew up separated by only a back fence. Adam was born covered head to toe with a fine down, and Dave completely hairless. Within time their follicle imbalances corrected themselves, but not soon enough to save them from a difficult passage through childhood.

Kiernan Box received an email telling him the budget for his suit for an impending video shoot was $1000. He immediately rushed out and had a superb Italian suit tailored for $960. Upon returning home he found an email saying there was a typo in the first email, and the budget was $100. He?ll probably be wearing the suit when you see him on stage. He needs to get a lot of use out of it.

STRANGE BIRD: The Album (Available September 14, 2004)

The band had set up camp in a disused telephone company building in Preston, outer Melbourne, in 2002 to write the album that would become Strange Bird. By the time they hit the studio they had a swag of tunes that were fresh out of the place where music comes from. The results were very satisfactory.

It was recorded at over several sessions at several studios with several engineers: at Sing Sing in Melbourne with Chris Thompson, in Sydney at Megaphon with Paul McKercher, at Big Jesusburger with Chris Townend, and two tracks were recorded by the band themselves ("O Mi Sol Li Lon" and "Sunstroke House") - originally meant as demo?s but which ended up making the grade.

It covers a lot of sonic terrain, veering from the sweet, building harmony of "The Vineyard", through the Wild West gallop of "This Train", the heavy "Song in the Key of Chance" and muted melancholy of "O Mi Sol Mi Lon" to the plaintive balladry of "The Night is A Blackbird", and that?s all in the first twenty minutes.

It was released in Australia in October 2002 and did great things. It made its way into various listening devices in lounge rooms, venues, libraries, buses, trains, cyberspace, bedrooms, headphones, media offices and record stores all over the world.

?Augie March are a quintet from Melbourne of jubilant, accessible invention, wrapping the enigmatic songcraft of singer-guitarist Glenn Richards in luxuriant melees of chiming guitars, mountain-stream voices and keyboard grandeur. There are fleeting airs of beguiling precedence -- Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks leading the Flaming Lips instead of Wayne Coyne; the Beatles' "White Album" as performed by Super Furry Animals. But on Strange Bird, Augie March's second album, the blend and glow are all their own.?

- DAVID FRICKE, ROLLING STONE (US), DECEMBER 23, 2003